(Posted by S2)BPSDB
Clippo recently pointed us to Nexus 6, which led to a bit of a discussion about “the worst climate paper ever”.
I pointed out David Archibald’s nonsense (later updated here), but I maintained that the worst I had read (in my opinion) was by Alexander & Bailey.
But I have now changed my mind – there’s a new (old) kid on the block.
Oliver K Manuel, (Emeritus) Professor of Chemistry at the University of Missouri-Rolla, believes that the Sun (and the rest of the solar system) are comprised of the remnants of a supernova that exploded about 5 billion years ago. As a result of this, the Sun is mainly made of Iron – it just has a thin skin of Helium and Hydrogen at the surface.
This pretty much flies in the face of every astronomical paper on the Sun in the last Century or two. 🙂
What does this have to do with climate change?
Manuel reckons that the heavy, iron-rich core of the sun is “pulled about” by the gravitational effects of the planets, which causes changes to solar output and therefore drives climate change. This only works, though, because the sun is made of iron – if it really was a ball of Hydrogen and Helium then the climate would not be changing.
I can’t remember the last time I read anything this absurd.
Icing on the cake – he actually cites Alexander & Bailey.
Even better – Plimer cites Manuel. 🙂
Manuel’s paper is here.
Bonus points to the first person who can say what Manuel, Archibald, Landscheidt, Alexander & Bailey have in common (other than the Sun).
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Greenfyre's 
I’ll go out on a limb here and say it’s publication in Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen’s vanity press, Energy & Environment. I also seem to recall that journal publishing a phlogiston paper a while ago.
(It’s not clear if you’re referring to the people or the papers in your question [1]. However, I can’t find a direct link between the individual authors.)
Semi-related note: a couple of months ago our physics department’s weekly colloquium was a presentation from Cortilliot, the geophysicist who assumes the planet’s a black, flat disc to disprove climate change. Yes, it’s another sun paper.
(The colloquium presentation went even further than his paper, arguing that fully-intact Viking settlements were thawing out of glaciers – implying either glacier formation happening several orders of magnitude faster than observed, or Viking buildings strong enough to avoid glacial bulldozing. It was so bad we had professors sending “he’s a kook” mail to all who attended for weeks.)
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Brian said:
“It was so bad we had professors sending “he’s a kook” mail to all who attended for weeks.”
More evidence of prejudice in the scientific community. 🙂
Or evidence that ‘anti-AGW’ scientists are just churning out this rubbish to get funding.
Here it is. I was mistaken: It references phlogiston as an example of an incorrect ‘consensus’ that was used to suppress more brilliant individual scientists. (Big surprise. For instance, one of those ‘scientists’ is E.G. Beck. It also reads only slightly more scholarly than an op-ed screed, which I didn’t notice until now.)
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I was wondering where Plimer had picked up the sun was made of iron. I thought it had been a slip, but apparently not.
As for what they have in common, I’d say they all signed one of those denialist petitions. Or each have a paper that was one of those 500 “peer-reviewed” papers supporting skepticism of AGW. (yeah–I’m thinking it is the latter one considering you did a post on this a while back).
And you may find Manuel’s numerous comments interesting in this thread @ Physics World.
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Thanks John,
Manuel believes that the great conspiracy started in 1969 in order to hide the truth found in lunar samples brought back by Apollo.
How does someone get to be that insane?
astrology. gotta be with ol L in there
I looked at Prof Manuel’s paper and to me it is meaningless.
It is far beyond my level of expertise to comment on it.
It might as well been written in Greek.
But right at the end, on the top of page 141 he drops a political/science conspiracy bomb.
Up until that point the paper is best left by me for experts to either prove or disprove…..not my call.
But then a conspiracy accusation in a scienctific paper?
Is that normal?
To me that’s a red flag.
Whenever we cite the worst ever – aren’t we really criticizing the editorial and publishing behind the paper?
There must be some totally whacked papers out there that never see publication.
Worthy contest.
BTW – I recall reading that many deniers were also in strong opposition to plate tectonics.
Actually, plate tectonics is not opposed by deniers. They use the ‘inventor’ of the idea, Alfred Wegener, as a stand-in for Galileo. The latter has been mentioned too often already, and people are aware that pointing to the Church as the opponents isn’t really that smart if you want to be credible. And thus Wegener is a useful substitute, since opposition to his idea came from scientists.
What the deniers forget is that opposition to Wegener came in particular from certain groups of geologists, essentially the same groups as those that oppose AGW today. Moreover, Wegener was opposed because he did not describe a mechanism for the plate tectonics. As soon as a mechanism was available, his theory was rapidly accepted.
Depends on who you count as “deniers”. If you mean serious ones, then I’d ask how you define that. If you don’t, it’s not hard to find ones who deny a lot of modern science, Louis Hissink, being a favourite example of mine.
I think the history of continental drift/plate tectonics is *way* more complicated. See comment @ Deltoid. Naomi Oreskes spent 400 pages on the history of this.
Arxiv is your friend. A greatmany nutters have deposited papers there. Its where Gherlich and Tshcauchner (sp?) had their paper on why the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist.
Gerlich and Tscheuschner actually managed to put their paper in an actual peer-reviewed journal (Journal of Modern Physics B). Its impact factor is below 1, however. Not surprising, if they publish this type of nonsense.
S2
We can’t guess what they have in common, personally?
Maybe it’s the drugs.
But seriously, thank you for this post, it has led me to more new reading about astronomical contributions to understanding longterm climate change.
I see that Manuel tries to say that his theory and his denial of AGW is supported by the work of research astronomer, Debra Fischer. Dr. Fischer’s research finds that stars with large amounts of iron are more likely to have planets.
It’s fascinating work by Dr. Fischer and implies ‘a correlation between metal abundance and planet formation’. In terms of the creation of solar systems, it means later-formed stars would be more likely to have planets and that our solar system may not be typical.
One would think that Dr. Fischer would be the one to deny AGW on the basis of her own research – not Manuel. Of course she doesn’t.
Apparently, Manuel thinks he is the better interpreter of Dr. Fischer’s own work. Of course he isn’t.
A little more investigation reveals Manuels web site:
http://www.omatumr.com/index.html
At the top is a link to a less ‘scientific’ summary publication about his ideas about the Sun:
Click to access The_Suns_Origin.pdf
From what I can make out he thinks atoms organise themselves in the Sun so that the lightest (hydrogen) appear on the surface and the heaviest (iron) end up in the centre.
“Hydrogen pouring from the Sun’s surface is “smoke” from the furnace that powers the Sun.”
Actually having read a bit more of the main paper, one wonders what motive the ‘scientist’ has, when he writes a paper about his Sun theory and in it writes a section called ‘politics, science and the IPCC’.
Then the conclusion contains nothing about any of his scientific findings!
There is little substance to the paper. How can anyone get such a paper published?
As an astronomer I can tell you that Dr. Manuel has tried to get any number of these papers (there are many) published in astronomical journals — and has failed every time (other than an occasional conference proceeding, and most of these are not by the American Astronomical Society). Long ago, he apparently worked in meteoric abundances, and might have even done some respectable work.
Lest someone misunderstand — the reason he doesn’t get published in the peer-reviewed astronomical journals is because he practices “(pseudo)science by fiat” (the world is what I say it is), rather than science. He makes unsubstantiated claims left, right, and center — and generally just makes it up. As we see again and again in science’s encounters with the anti-scientific, it takes next to no effort at all to make one’s own universe as one wants it to be, but takes frustratingly significant amount of time and effort to rebut.
A somewhat related idea was from Rhodes Fairbridge:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodes_Fairbridge
Click to access ICS176.pdf
And Nicola Scafetta mentioned it in 2009 @ EPA:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/eed.nsf/vwpsw/360796B06E48EA0485257601005982A1#video
See video, or p62- of the PDF.
http://onestillfree.blogspot.com/2008/04/climate-change-article-by-david.html
David (we need 1000 ppm) Archibald wins my vote for the most dangerous piece.
I suggest that anyone interested should follow the link to Archibald’s “article”.
This is one of the most dishonest things I’ve ever seen. It would be dangerous if the dishonesty weren’t so obvious.
Argh! I shouldn’t have looked! On page 5, Archiblad shows a graph illustrating the “correlation” between 5 “selected” rural US stations and solar irradiance – as if these 5 stations were representative for the entire globe! And its actually not even a very good correlation.
There’s a reason why Nexus6 referred to it as The Worst Climate Science Paper Ever Of All Time Anywhere. Hell, sheep albedo would have been better, and that one was a nonexistent deliberate April Fools’ stunt!
I think we have 2 types of article/paper contending for this prize:-
1. The work of an obvious liar (someone you wouldn’t trust to tell you the time of day);
2. The work of a D-K sufferer who really doesn’t know what s/he’s doing and might actually be well-meaning (despite wingnut bias, s/he might be quite reasonable).
We got sheep
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Thanks for the feedback, everyone.
Regarding the “what Manuel, Archibald, Landscheidt, Alexander & Bailey have in common” question – I had in mind the most obvious one in my opinion (They’ve all been published in E&E) – but of course my opinion is no better than that of anyone else.
I particularly liked the responses by Eli and Martha. 🙂
Special thanks to John Mashey for the Rhodes Fairbridge links – I loved the “red shift doesn’t prove expansion” bit. 🙂
For those that have not read it yet, the “Sheep albedo” effect was originally published on Real Climate, and has since found it’s way into the Museum of Hoaxes.
they are all complete dicks?
When I encounter a denier who raises Einstein, Galileo, or perhaps Wegener, the following quote comes to mind:
‘They laughed at Galileo. They laughed at Newton. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.’
Carl Sagan
The Sun is a plasma diffuser that sorts atoms by mass!!!
bitches.
Well, yes, the paper is a piece of crap.
But why do you like the word ‘bitches’, my brother?
I suggest your word choice is sexist and inappropriate, although I’m quite sure that is not the intention.
take care
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Reminiscent of some vintage Deltoid. Yours is more extensive, though.
im interesting in Oliver K Manuel ,Professor of Chemistry at the University of Missouri-Rolla for its publication..thanks for your information
It sounds like a lot of you commenting may not know a lot about astrophysics, and are basically doing the ‘it sounds weird so it must be crazy and i won’t bother to look any further than that’ – sort of like has happen to those interested in conspiracy theories, or in climate change when there were more people (or more loudly?) disputing the evidence.
I’m not sure if this is a valid argument against climate change or not – but i am aware that one theory of the earth’s magnetic field is that we have a mostly liquid iron core to the earth which is spinning somewhat independently, influence at times by lunar perturbations, which gives us our strong magnetic field, (which some postulate the human heart is born in ‘alignment with’ and whose own em field extends feet outside of the body itself) which protects life on earth from being irradiated by cosmic radiation (and made dead, directly and indirectly, super storms etc), ionized solar rays sometimes called solar wind, that give us, for instance, the aurora borealis.
So on the one hand, sounds kinda weird – iron core in the sun? but on the other hand, the sun IS a FLUID of the super-heated plasma sort, and thus fluid dynamics ensue, when the sun’s gravitational field is not dead center – jupiter in particular pulls its field somewhat off center – discounting the sun’s own spin, etc. other stuff i know relatively little about.
anyways i get pissed off when people start accusing people of being kooks, when they may not have had the nerve once upon a time to stand up and speak out when there camp was the one being called kooks once upon a time, and just seem so small-minded that they choose not even to consider anything outside what they consider ‘normal’, or easy to understand because it is already close to current thinking. I apologize. little passive aggressive resentment i may have built up there.
anyways maybe i don’t really know enough to wade into this argument; maybe some of these are thoroughly quashed and i haven’t done the least bit of self schooling in what people have already written to get up to speed.
That said, i’m not sure how comfortable i would feel here sharing less than mainstream ideas.
I guess this is an ‘anti’ site, ‘against’ the ‘deniers’, purportedly of truth in general, and climate change in particular?
Believe you me, i have looked into a conspiracy theory or two… mike k was one of the one’s telling me ‘just because people may have talked about something doesn’t mean there is a conspiracy’ etc. non- teleological. Like if my vast fortunes were riding on it, i wouldn’t schmooze and talk to other people in my business either, right?
something like that.
“zero” and “collapse” are some interesting new documentaries… call them conspiracy theory, or fact. might wanna check em out some time… might be better than piecing together a paper on whether the sun has an iron core… when you don’t have the background (-> including me) the second talks about ‘peak oil’ a little bt… what happens to population when we can’t artificially maintain our energy output at high beyond norms etc lallalallal
open mic night byes.
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There’s no reason not to wild-ass-guess that the Sun (and gas giant planets) has/have a very large iron core(s). Perhaps smaller bodies are rocky because they just don’t have enough mass to collect large amounts of gas. This is interesting because the sound bite description of an outer planet or a star is “ball of gas” or “ball of incandescent gas” not “rock with a very deep envelope of gas.”
However, I assume Sun doesn’t have a very very very very very large iron core because, well, a massive body would accrue more gas than just a thin layer, so the sun would have started larger. Also, we can make a judgment based on the mass estimate and spectroscopy, right? That’s what makes this guy a looney (for starters)?